Operational experiences from the viewpoint of university IT system administrators in the metropolitan area on east Japan great earthquake

Saitama University is located in the metropolitan area of Japan. In March 2011 on the East Japan Great Earthquake occurred. The university is about 200 km from the epicenter of the earthquake. While the earthquake did not have a direct impact on the university, it did result in multiple indirect damages. The earthquake influenced operations of the university's information infrastructure, whose system administrators had to take several operations in order to keep the infrastructure service functioning. One of the damages of the earthquake was a rolling blackout. The earthquake caused damages to various electric power plants, including Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The area in and around Tokyo, the Metropolitan Area in Japan, was short of electric power, and rolling blackouts were unavoidable. Some important servers, such as web servers and e-mail, could not run because the rolling blackouts frequently caused hardware troubles. As a result, it was difficult for the people of the university to use communication tools such as e-mail, web and so on. This paper explains operational experiences and lessons based on the experiences from the viewpoint of system administrators in Saitama University; the article also discusses operation and management of information systems in disasters.